Recently announced as an inductee into the 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Dave Stewart — the award-winning singer, songwriter, musician, producer, innovator and Eurythmics co-founder — has released the title track from his forthcoming project, Ebony McQueen. The song, which arrives with a music video featuring illustrations by Kathryn Robertson, is an introduction to Ebony McQueen, the fictional voodoo blues queen and living embodiment of the blues music that inspired Stewart’s entire career. Stream the single here.
“She is basically my entry point into music and the title track is the entry point to this story,” shares Stewart. “Ultimately, it's a story about destiny. There’s a point in your life when something's put before you and you can either choose this path or that path. If you’re open to it, the right path chooses you. And the whole story is about how that awakening happens.”
Ebony McQueen, the 26-track opus — which will be released digitally and as a deluxe multi-format box set on Friday, May 20 via Bay Street Records — can be pre-saved/pre-ordered here.
The deluxe multi-format box set features the complete triple album on 3x vinyl LP alongside two additional vinyl EPs, two cassettes, and an expansive photo book that includes typed lyrics as well as Stewart’s original film “scriptment.” Stewart is currently in the process of developing Ebony McQueen into a film and stage musical (details TBA).
The joyful, rousing Ebony McQueen brings together Stewart’s seminal early inspirations — his father’s Rodgers & Hammerstein records, Robert Johnson’s blues, and the mind-blowing sounds of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Rolling Stones — all filtered through his own inimitable creative lens of richly orchestrated pop, rock ‘n roll, psychedelia, musical theater, even the distinctive rake-and-scrape sound of his beloved colorful Junkanoo carnival. Deeply personal yet wholly universal, Ebony McQueen is more than Dave Stewart’s own story — it’s for everyone whose lives have been steered by the redemptive magic of music and mysterious power of love.
A teenage boy in the northern city of Sunderland, England is visited by a living, breathing voodoo blues queen, setting into motion an extraordinary journey. Ebony McQueen is among the most ambitious and autobiographical works of Dave Stewart’s remarkable life and landmark career, an exhilarating, original musical fable about music and young manhood, finding hard-earned wisdom and true love with the girl next door. Written and produced by Stewart, Ebony McQueen was recorded at studios including Nashville’s legendary Blackbird Studio and his own Bay Street Recording Studio in the Caribbean, with contributions from an array of top vocalists, session players, and a 60-piece Budapest Scoring Orchestra.
In addition to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Stewart — among his extensive list of accomplishments and accolades — will also be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York City this June.
